With Global Brigades our work revolves around the people, and depends on the people seeking us out for long and short term solutions to health problems. But like all health professionals, we like to acknowledge that our clients and patients, who in this case are rural and semi-rural Hondurans, are unique and diverse individuals with a name, a face, and a story. The lifestyle that rural Hondurans endure every day is so much different than any other, and truly defines and determines their access to health and well being.
I recently spent the night at a family’s house in a community where we have been working for 7 months. Visiting the community as a health worker during daytime hours gave me only a narrowed perspective on the daily routine, but it was after hours that I discovered the true intricacies of rural Honduran life. I savored the last bit of sunlight in the valley before dusk, enjoyed a typical Honduran meal, invented entertainment with sticks and rocks and trees with the children, and lived by candlelight until an early bedtime of 9 o’clock. Rosa and Oscar, the parents of the house, did not hesitate to offer me their bed, proceeding to sleep in a smaller bed with two children at their feet. Then waking in the morning at 5 o’clock to do chores, milk cows, clean, and cook hundreds of tortillas for the day’s supply.
Compared to the lifestyle I’ve known, it seems so simple. Yet the lack of basic amenities which we take for granted like running water and electricity adds a greater challenge to daily life. It’s people like Rosa and Oscar who will come into the clinic with back pain from uncomfortable sleeping situations, stomach aches from drinking unpurified water, and calluses on their hands from the stove and planting in the fields.
Meeting a Honduran patient for the first time, one never knows their life story or the challenges they’ve battled to get to where they are. But there is certainty in the difficulty of rural life that has everything to do with that person’s state of being and outlook on life that is well hidden under that wise, calm smile.
Jul 3, 2009 9:15:25 AM | From the Field
With Global Brigades our work revolves around the people, and depends on the people seeking us out for long and short term solutions to health problems. But like all health professionals, we like to acknowledge that our clients and patients, who in this case are rural and semi-rural Hondurans, are unique and diverse individuals with […]
